Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2014-08-29 02:48 am
azurelunatic) wrote2014-08-29 02:48 am
The Eye of the Bee-Holder
Today Purple called lunch early, as he had a 1pm meeting. I got in shortly after the lunch call, headed for the cafeteria, didn't see Purple, and didn't see any of the usual suspects from his crew. I did see two ladies at a table by themselves (the third who had joined them yesterday having other obligations elsewhere). So I joined them, and texted: "Invisible Purple? I'm outside."
Purple shortly appeared and took the fourth chair at the table; he'd seen no one earlier, so he'd headed back to his desk. I made introductions, and added to Purple that these ladies were two of three of my lunch companions the previous day. Purple cracked a bee joke.
"You told him?!?!"
"He's the friend who I accidentally blew the wasp at."
That broke the ice, and shortly the table was an outpost of vaguely terrible hilarity. Presently Purple said something, so I made the beckon-and-punch gesture at him. Our tablemates spotted it and identified it as some sort of special sign language. "It means, 'come over here so I can hit you,'" I translated.
Apparently I am usually so very supernaturally nice to teammates that it's got to balance out somehow. And I'm not sure how this feeds in to the idea that I teleport everywhere. Purple was charmed by the fact that someone else whipped out a pocket knife and casually sliced up some fruit, as he often gets weird looks for doing the same.
I got into a general data-entry-and-productivity groove late in the evening. The guy emptying wastebaskets came around. I waved to him. The fellow I think of as the ginger security guard came by. "Hey Beautiful," he hailed me, and we made small talk about my cube's refrigerator. His phone whistled at him, and he headed back on his rounds.
Shallow breaths. Shoulders around ears. I was aware that I was pre-reacting to something that hadn't happened and might not ever happen. I was trying to force my brain back from the edge when Purple pinged me to ask whether I was ready to leave. I definitely was.
I was still breathing not quite right when I got out of the bathroom. The click of the door unlocking made me jump. Purple barely had time to make some Every Flavour Beans jokes ("Mommy, why do the 'grass' jellybean and the 'skunk' jellybean taste the same?" "You'll understand when you're older.") before we were walking out the door, and then I was swearing and turning around for my headset. It took until we were back outside again for me to be able to articulate what had tripped off the panic attack. Purple patted me awkwardly on the arm as I put some pretty vigorous distance between me and the building.
Purple laid out the idea that there were three likely contexts for "Hey, Beautiful":
1) trying to be nice in some fashion
2) Heartfelt
3) Creepy
I pointed out that in a street harassment context, the line between "Hey Beautiful!" and "You Ugly Bitch-Whore!" can sometimes be a "Buzz off, creep!" This meandered into a discussion of the difference between typical street harassment (generally from strangers) and Bad Relationship Dynamics playing out in a context which happens to be public. And from there it went to Shawn.
I mean. It is not unthinkable for people who work together to be into each other. It is not unthinkable for someone to be into someone else, but that other person does not reciprocate. I mean hell, I am into Purple, and we have talked about it like grown-ups, and we have arranged some code phrases such that if it becomes painful for me, that he can avoid aggravating the situation.
I'm also fairly certain that I'm conducting myself in a manner nearly befitting a gentlebeing, and that wasps with suddenly changed flight plans aside, Purple has no reason to expect that anything worse than me accidentally getting snagged on his hair will happen because I'm around. (Last night I did wind up putting a hand wrong while I was leaning over his shoulder to look at various thornbush photos. "Woops, sorry, that was your hair." "Yes, it was," he said, gathering it up and moving it out of harm's way. We made faces at each other. The Alaskan wild rose looks to have spikes with similar authority to a gooseberry bush.)
I don't know the ginger security guard. I don't know what to expect from him. When some guy likes me and I don't like him the same way, and I don't know if I can trust him, I get nervous. When I know that I'm likely to be basically alone in the building with him, and he's the help that I would be calling if I felt uncomfortable being basically alone in the building? That is a recipe for me being very unnerved.
Purple's bid to distract me from my worry, since I'd identified it as not necessarily grounded in anything other than possible dynamics and worry, involved how things at his last job had ended (shenanigans followed by layoffs followed by finishing up the last half-hour of dev work so it would be easy to hand off). Somehow that led into the concept of the USB-disabling walk of shame, possibly into Shawn's computer shop. And the only computer-related shenanigan of Shawn's that I was aware of (the end of his first marriage and the lack of a grand gesture). He observed that the manner of Shawn's first wife's departure was the sort of extreme type of cutoff that doesn't happen lightly, and how that sort of situation, one might suspect that things were perhaps worse than other things might indicate. I didn't think that anything physically bad had been going on, but that Shawn's narcissistic and neglectful ways were certainly enough. "Did I ever tell you exactly how Shawn broke things off with me?"
It was not a pretty sight. "If someone I was friends with told me about doing that," Purple mused, "I might not be friends with them anymore. Even if we were pretty good friends."
I had calmed down substantially. Yay. Purple is not bad at talking me down when the inside of my brain isn't fit to regulate.
I didn't ask Purple whether he was willing to be my beard, because while hilarious, that probably would not have been appropriate. Though I would not be opposed if Purple were to happen to come over while the ginger security guard was present, to incidentally provide a practical demonstration of how my being friendly demeanor varies from my totally-into-you demeanor. I may bring up the topic later and see whether he'd be willing to attempt to arrange that.
Various other bits of conversation occurred, and then I got an earworm. I just busted up giggling, and had to do some pretty fancy shenanigans in order to actually explain the earworm when gasping "Cyril Connelly!" and then giggling some more did not make everything clear. There are not all that many songs out there which involve actual bees in figurative birds-and-bees situations which I am aware of. In fact, "Eric the Half a Bee" is the only one where I am aware of the line "I love him carnally" existing in a bee-related context. Oh, Monty Python. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the bee-holder.
Purple shortly appeared and took the fourth chair at the table; he'd seen no one earlier, so he'd headed back to his desk. I made introductions, and added to Purple that these ladies were two of three of my lunch companions the previous day. Purple cracked a bee joke.
"You told him?!?!"
"He's the friend who I accidentally blew the wasp at."
That broke the ice, and shortly the table was an outpost of vaguely terrible hilarity. Presently Purple said something, so I made the beckon-and-punch gesture at him. Our tablemates spotted it and identified it as some sort of special sign language. "It means, 'come over here so I can hit you,'" I translated.
Apparently I am usually so very supernaturally nice to teammates that it's got to balance out somehow. And I'm not sure how this feeds in to the idea that I teleport everywhere. Purple was charmed by the fact that someone else whipped out a pocket knife and casually sliced up some fruit, as he often gets weird looks for doing the same.
I got into a general data-entry-and-productivity groove late in the evening. The guy emptying wastebaskets came around. I waved to him. The fellow I think of as the ginger security guard came by. "Hey Beautiful," he hailed me, and we made small talk about my cube's refrigerator. His phone whistled at him, and he headed back on his rounds.
Shallow breaths. Shoulders around ears. I was aware that I was pre-reacting to something that hadn't happened and might not ever happen. I was trying to force my brain back from the edge when Purple pinged me to ask whether I was ready to leave. I definitely was.
I was still breathing not quite right when I got out of the bathroom. The click of the door unlocking made me jump. Purple barely had time to make some Every Flavour Beans jokes ("Mommy, why do the 'grass' jellybean and the 'skunk' jellybean taste the same?" "You'll understand when you're older.") before we were walking out the door, and then I was swearing and turning around for my headset. It took until we were back outside again for me to be able to articulate what had tripped off the panic attack. Purple patted me awkwardly on the arm as I put some pretty vigorous distance between me and the building.
Purple laid out the idea that there were three likely contexts for "Hey, Beautiful":
1) trying to be nice in some fashion
2) Heartfelt
3) Creepy
I pointed out that in a street harassment context, the line between "Hey Beautiful!" and "You Ugly Bitch-Whore!" can sometimes be a "Buzz off, creep!" This meandered into a discussion of the difference between typical street harassment (generally from strangers) and Bad Relationship Dynamics playing out in a context which happens to be public. And from there it went to Shawn.
I mean. It is not unthinkable for people who work together to be into each other. It is not unthinkable for someone to be into someone else, but that other person does not reciprocate. I mean hell, I am into Purple, and we have talked about it like grown-ups, and we have arranged some code phrases such that if it becomes painful for me, that he can avoid aggravating the situation.
I'm also fairly certain that I'm conducting myself in a manner nearly befitting a gentlebeing, and that wasps with suddenly changed flight plans aside, Purple has no reason to expect that anything worse than me accidentally getting snagged on his hair will happen because I'm around. (Last night I did wind up putting a hand wrong while I was leaning over his shoulder to look at various thornbush photos. "Woops, sorry, that was your hair." "Yes, it was," he said, gathering it up and moving it out of harm's way. We made faces at each other. The Alaskan wild rose looks to have spikes with similar authority to a gooseberry bush.)
I don't know the ginger security guard. I don't know what to expect from him. When some guy likes me and I don't like him the same way, and I don't know if I can trust him, I get nervous. When I know that I'm likely to be basically alone in the building with him, and he's the help that I would be calling if I felt uncomfortable being basically alone in the building? That is a recipe for me being very unnerved.
Purple's bid to distract me from my worry, since I'd identified it as not necessarily grounded in anything other than possible dynamics and worry, involved how things at his last job had ended (shenanigans followed by layoffs followed by finishing up the last half-hour of dev work so it would be easy to hand off). Somehow that led into the concept of the USB-disabling walk of shame, possibly into Shawn's computer shop. And the only computer-related shenanigan of Shawn's that I was aware of (the end of his first marriage and the lack of a grand gesture). He observed that the manner of Shawn's first wife's departure was the sort of extreme type of cutoff that doesn't happen lightly, and how that sort of situation, one might suspect that things were perhaps worse than other things might indicate. I didn't think that anything physically bad had been going on, but that Shawn's narcissistic and neglectful ways were certainly enough. "Did I ever tell you exactly how Shawn broke things off with me?"
It was not a pretty sight. "If someone I was friends with told me about doing that," Purple mused, "I might not be friends with them anymore. Even if we were pretty good friends."
I had calmed down substantially. Yay. Purple is not bad at talking me down when the inside of my brain isn't fit to regulate.
I didn't ask Purple whether he was willing to be my beard, because while hilarious, that probably would not have been appropriate. Though I would not be opposed if Purple were to happen to come over while the ginger security guard was present, to incidentally provide a practical demonstration of how my being friendly demeanor varies from my totally-into-you demeanor. I may bring up the topic later and see whether he'd be willing to attempt to arrange that.
Various other bits of conversation occurred, and then I got an earworm. I just busted up giggling, and had to do some pretty fancy shenanigans in order to actually explain the earworm when gasping "Cyril Connelly!" and then giggling some more did not make everything clear. There are not all that many songs out there which involve actual bees in figurative birds-and-bees situations which I am aware of. In fact, "Eric the Half a Bee" is the only one where I am aware of the line "I love him carnally" existing in a bee-related context. Oh, Monty Python. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the bee-holder.